Nation and World

KUNITACHI, Japan >> On a recent weekend, an 84-year-old survivor of the Nagasaki atomic bombing retraced his movements on a map: the inferno during his 20-kilometer (12-mile) walk home, the “black rain” of falling radioactive particles and how he felt sick days later.

NEW YORK >> President Barack Obama will impose even steeper cuts on greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. power plants than previously expected, senior administration officials said Sunday, in what the president called the most significant step the U.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia >> Malaysian officials said Sunday that they would seek help from territories near the island where a suspected piece of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet was discovered to try to find more plane debris.

HANOVER, Pa. >> Many Americans assumed the Confederate flag was retired for good after governors in South Carolina and Alabama removed it from their statehouses this summer and presidential candidates from both parties declared it too divisive for official display.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. >> NASA is offering up wreckage from the Challenger and Columbia for public view after hiding it from the world for decades. A new exhibit at Kennedy Space Center features two pieces of debris, one from each lost shuttle, as well as poignant, personal reminders of the 14 astronauts killed in flight.

CAIRO >> Despite persistent human rights concerns, the United States on Sunday resumed formal security talks with Egypt that were last held six years ago and kept on hiatus until now amid the political unrest that swept the country in the wake of the Arab Spring.

SACRAMENTO >> A spike in suicides and attempted suicides has prompted corrections officials to step up oversight at a California women’s prison as inspectors try to pinpoint the cause of the troubling increase.

BEVERLY HILLS >> Maggie Smith’s character on “Downton Abbey” might find the pomp and circumstance uncomfortable, but the PBS show is getting its own float in the Rose Parade, two days before the premiere of its sixth and final season on Jan.

ALTURAS >> A firefighter killed by a wildfire in Northern California was scouting the area when he became trapped by the wind-stoked blaze, officials said Saturday. U.S. Forest Service firefighter David Ruhl was driving down a Modoc National Forest road in a vehicle Thursday.

HARARE, Zimbabwe >> Zimbabwe has suspended the hunting of lions, leopards and elephants in an area where a lion popular with tourists was killed, and is investigating the killing of another lion in April that may have been illegal, the country’s wildlife authority said Saturday.

ALPHARETTA, Ga. >> The ongoing tensions between the families of the late megastar Whitney Houston and her ex-husband, R&B singer Bobby Brown, erupted Saturday during a memorial service for their daughter, Bobbi Kristina.

DUMA, West Bank — Suspected Jewish assailants set fire to a West Bank home on Friday and burned a sleeping Palestinian toddler to death in an attack that drew Palestinian rage and widespread Israeli condemnation.

While the world has been focused on Greece’s economic woes, the United States has been experiencing a serious debt crisis in its own backyard — in the US territory of Puerto Rico. The tiny Caribbean island owes $72 billion in debt, held mostly in US municipal bonds.

The news broke early Tuesday. Cecil, a 13-year-old black-maned lion of Zimbabwe had been killed by a Minnesota dentist with a bow and arrow. The story made international news. Trophy hunter Walter Hunter paid $55,000 to kill a lion in the wild.

WASHINGTON >> Air safety investigators have a “high degree of confidence” that a photo of aircraft debris found in the Indian Ocean is of a wing component unique to the Boeing 777, the same model as the Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared last year, according to a U.

DELAWARE, Ohio — An Ohio man who jumped a fence to pet cougars at the Columbus zoo and posted video of it on YouTube says he jokingly said “Here, kitty” and decided to move closer when the animals seemed to respond.

JERUSALEM — Israeli bulldozers began demolishing a contested housing complex in a West Bank settlement on Wednesday as the prime minister’s office announced the “immediate construction” of some 300 new units at another location in the same settlement and advanced plans for about 500 new units in east Jerusalem.

MAHWAH, N.J. — Police say a man drove off with a bag containing $150,000 in cash after two employees who were replenishing ATMs mistakenly left it on a lawn in northern New Jersey. Mahwah police say in a news release that the ATM employees had stopped at a business on Industrial Avenue when one of them placed the satchel on the front lawn as he moved items around in their vehicle.

SAN FRANCISCO >> Ivory dealers in San Francisco’s Chinatown stood in their shop doors next to windows full of carved ivory tusks and trinkets, unfazed by proposed federal rules that the White House says go as far as possible to ban the U.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. >> A man killed by an escort he met online is being investigated for possible links to the unsolved disappearances or slayings of women nationwide, authorities said. Neal Falls, of Springfield, Oregon, was carrying axes, a shovel and bleach when he was killed July 18, and authorities said Monday he had been stopped, interviewed or investigated by police in at least 20 states.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Insisting that Americans deserve better, President Barack Obama chided Republicans Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz on Monday for a series of campaign-trail attacks that he said would be “ridiculous if it weren’t so sad.

Boston’s bid to host the 2024 Olympics is over. The city and the U.S. Olympic Committee severed ties after a board teleconference Monday, ending an effort that was troubled nearly from the moment it started.

WASHINGTON >> The president of Planned Parenthood said her organization’s clinics never adjust the abortion procedure to better preserve fetal organs for medical research and that the organization’s charges cover only the cost of transmission to researchers.

AMES, Iowa >> Rick Perry is attacking Donald Trump’s credibility and branding the billionaire businessman “a cancer on conservatism.” Rick Santorum, a conservative stalwart, popped up on a TV program popular with liberals.

ALBANY, N.Y. >> More than 20 years of habitat restoration and breeding programs have helped the endangered Karner blue butterfly make a comeback in the pine barrens of upstate New York where it was discovered by Russian author Vladimir Nabokov decades ago.

WASHINGTON >> State-run health insurance markets that offer coverage under President Barack Obama’s health law are struggling with high costs and disappointing enrollment. These challenges could lead more of them to turn over operations to the federal government or join forces with other states.

NAIROBI, Kenya >> Declaring Kenya at a “crossroads” between promise and peril, President Barack Obama on Sunday pressed the nation of his father’s birth to root out corruption, treat women and minorities as equal citizens, and take responsibility for its future.

NEW YORK﻿ >> Five days before he was to start college, Fred Maahs’ world turned upside down. Off the Delaware coast in 1980, on the last day of summer vacation, the 18-year-old took a dive from his family’s boat into an unseen sandbar barely a foot below the surface, sustaining injuries that paralyzed him from the chest down.

The term “sanctuary city” has become a rallying cry for conservative Republicans seeking stiffer immigration laws. They characterize such places, including Long Beach, as havens where those in the country illegally are protected from immigration authorities.

LOS ANGELES >> A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Department of Justice’s current system of detaining children with their mothers after they have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border violates an 18-year-old court settlement.

HOBART, Australia >> A woman watched her father being mauled to death by a large shark on Saturday while the pair were diving off the Australian island state of Tasmania, police said. The adult woman had returned to their boat with scallops that the pair had collected then became concerned that her father, in his late 40s, had not surfaced after her, Inspector David Wiss told reporters in the state capital of Hobart.

ANKARA, Turkey >> Turkish jets struck camps belonging to Kurdish militants in northern Iraq, authorities said Saturday, the first strikes since a peace deal was announced in 2013, and again bombed Islamic State positions in Syria.

SANAA, Yemen >> Saudi-led coalition airstrikes hit a residential area in a quiet Red Sea town in Yemen late Friday, killing at least 120 people in the deadliest strike against civilians since the March offensive began, security and medical officials said.

LAFAYETTE, La. >> The man who killed two people and wounded nine others before killing himself at a crowded showing of “Trainwreck” was mentally ill and so violent that his wife removed his guns from their home and his daughter and in-laws asked authorities to keep him away, court documents show.

Reality television is all about winning over viewers with risk-taking, but one Australian show went a little too far. The show, called “Go Back to Where You Came From,” nearly killed several of its participants when it reportedly dragged them through an active Syrian war zone.

MANILA, Philippines >> Grammy award-winning singer Chris Brown says he’s confused about why he’s stuck in Manila, where his departure has been delayed by a fraud complaint over a canceled concert last New Year’s Eve.

LOS ANGELES — Some Southland motorists could experience some traffic delays this morning as Vice President Joe Biden wraps up his visit to Los Angeles and flies north to San Francisco. Biden’s exact travel schedule was not released, but police advised motorists to avoid the following areas: • Wilshire Boulevard between Santa Monica Boulevard and Beverly Drive from 9 to 11 a.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. >> Scientists have identified a “close cousin” to Earth that’s orbiting a sun-like star and might harbor life. The researchers announced their discovery Thursday based on observations from NASA’s Kepler space telescope.

SAN FRANCISCO >> A blue-ribbon panel says curtailing the illegal marijuana market in California should be the primary goal of legalizing the drug’s recreational use in the state, and not developing another tax source.